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Hands-on With Top 4 New Gaming Gadgets: Live @ CES 2008 (With Two Videos!)

Gaming and gadgets are ungainly bedfellows. But every year we come to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with hope in our hearts. Never mind the treadmill-controllers for first-person shooters or speaker-mounted fans that blow lightly into your face with each on-screen explosion. This time, things will be different. Or will they?

TN Games 3rd Space HXT Helmet

If you like controllers that rumble, maybe, the theory goes, you'll enjoy a vest that jams you in the chest (or back) when an enemy shoots you. We've seen the 3rd Space FPS Vest from TN Games before, essentially a modified life-vest with eight force cells--four in front, four in back--that jab you with 25 psi of pressure. At CES, TN Games unveiled a helmet, the first in its follow-up line of HXT (or head and extremities) gear. The vest is officially neat, providing a novel kind of feedback, and roughly simulating the experience of getting shot while wearing some sort of armored vest. But the helmet is borderline excellent, almost instantly conditioning you to avoid damage at all costs. That's because it hurts. A headshot from the front drills into your forehead, dazing you slightly, making you return fire a little too wildly. Side-facing hits aren't much of a problem, but a shot to the back of your skull is the perfect dose of punishment. After all, why are you getting hit from behind, much less squarely in the brainpan?

I might be biased, though. My playing style nearly always skews towards tactical caution. You could call it cowardice. Tactical shooters like Call of Duty 4 and standard shooters at higher difficulty levels reward this approach. And a skull-squishing, satisfyingly heavy helmet amps up the realism, playing to my nervous, masochistic instincts. So as much as I liked it, run-and-gun players might completely despise this helmet.

But here come the complications: As with the vest, the helmet uses an air-compressor to work those four cells. And the only compatible games, for now, are Quake 3 and 4, Doom 3 and Call of Duty 2 for the PC, and a house-designed Quake clone called Incursion. TN Games hasn't released a price for the helmet, but the vest alone is $170. So like most gaming gadgets, this is a gamble, which can only pay off if a larger company invests heavily in the technology, or enough wealthy gizmo-obsessed types. A cheaper, less complex headband, for example, might be a more feasible idea, even if it simply rumbled with each shot. In other words, this type of feedback makes perfect sense, but to have a real impact on gaming, it needs to be less expensive, and compatible with more games.

Texas Instruments DualView Display

Despite the rise of online gaming services like Xbox Live, there are still gamers out there relying on split-screen play. When the game is a team effort--say, a cooperative mission in Gears of War--the only drawback is a smaller view for both players. But for head-to-head gaming, split-screen allows for a kind of clairvoyant cheating, letting you peek at each other's plays in Madden or avoid an otherwise well-planned ambush in Halo 3. Texas Instruments' solution is a variant of 3D technology, called DualView. No actual product has been released, but TI showed a prototype rear-projection DLP display that, to the naked eye, showed overlapping views of Project Gotham Racing 4. But with a pair of wacky plastic glasses, you can hit a button to alternate between the two views. Cheating is still an option, but requires you to free up a hand, click the dongle hanging from the glasses, and then click back to your view.

TI executed this concept well (we gave DualView one of our Editor's Choice Awards at the show), but in the muddled tradition of gaming gadgetry, there are plenty of strings attached. Games have to be set up via System Link, or hooking up two machines, each running a copy of the game being played. You're also restricted to two players, so if a third friend shows up late, or is simply waiting his turn, he's stuck looking at overlapping, unwatchable gameplay. And you have to wear those goggles, which didn't give me an immediate headache, but would get in the way of glasses, and instantly vault you to new levels of dork-hood. Finally, DualView has only been developed for DLP sets, although Texas Instruments thinks it should eventually work with plasma and LCD.

Although Texas Instruments created DualView, companies like Samsung are developing sets that incorporate it. So someone, somewhere, will own a DualView display. Rich gamers (preferably those with a single friend) can rejoice. The rest of us are better off waiting for this kind of feature to become standard in most hi-def TVs, which could mean years, if ever.

Peavey Riffmaster Pro

The AG Riffmaster Guitar Controller is s a simple idea: A Guitar Hero II controller that looks and feels like a real-life, wooden guitar. It's the correct size, the correct weight, and even the correct price: $399. That's the first problem. Another is the fact that it only works with Guitar Hero II on the PlayStation 2. But by the end of this year, Peavey claims the controller will work with additional consoles and games, including Rock Star on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, as well as some games that have yet to be released. And for a startling $2000, you can now get the Peavey Riffmaster Pro, a full-fledged band fantasy it, with two of those wooden controllers, a high-quality microphone, and a working P.A. system, with four speakers, a cabinet, and a 150-watt head (which includes a 15-channel mixer). The full kit is aimed at DJ's and bar owners, and also comes with a small display that sits on the floor, like a proper monitor.

So let's cut to the chase: By the end of this year, the Riffmaster Pro will work with Rock Band. The mic will sound infinitely better, the amp stack will make you appear at least 100 percent cooler, and that little monitor will be useless, but you can make like a real rocker and impale it with a mic stand. It might be $2000, but for the absolute best Rock Band experience money can buy, it's time to pass the hat around.

Ostendo CRVD-42DWX+ Curved Monitor

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Forget widescreen--the new curved monitor from Ostendo and NEC is practically surround screen. This DLP display sells itself, with a 42.4-in. screen that sucks you into the game. The bad news first: You can't buy it, not for a year or so at the earliest. That, and what's likely to be a massive price tag, are the only problems with this display, which is everything we want in a gaming gadget. First, it works with tons of PC games, as long as they support widescreen resolution. Never mind that, at 2880 x 900 resolution, this is the equivalent of cramming two 17-in monitors together. Games like Crysis map to a desktop's resolution automatically, which means most new games will support this ultra-widescreen view without code patches or rewrites. The screen also has a blindingly fast response time--20 microseconds, compared to 10 to 15 milliseconds on the average LCD. Lump in a 10,000:1 contrast ratio and exceptional colors, and this monitor is more than a luxury gaming display, but a new kind of pro-quality monitor for almost any image-intensive work. NEC showed off a demo screen with medical scans, as well as a standard desktop packed with application windows.

As for how it looks, this display is nothing short of incredible, as your brain immediately cooperates, and with a bit of cognitive acrobatics turns the curved image into full peripheral vision. Multiple monitors have you twitching back and forth, and carving off sections of your brain. This device is absolutely immersive, and a revelation, and everyone should have one. We don't expect it to actually come out within a year, but whenever it does, prepare yourself for a heart-breaking price tag, and a lifetime of coveting and bitterness to follow.

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